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Conveying: Drive system enables two synchronous movements with max performance

The new FAULHABER DualGear drive system optimizes automated warehouse logistics, enabling two synchronous, powerful movements in one compact unit. Combining a BX4 motor with two GPT planetary gearheads, it is ideal for storage/retrieval machines and autonomous logistics. Hall sensors ensure exact positioning for compact, efficient, and reliable performance in demanding, small-space environments.
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Decentralized drives offer seamless integration

NORD DRIVE-SYSTEMS' NORDAC LINK motor starters, plus NORDAC LINK and NORDAC FLEX variable frequency drives, feature a plug-and-play design for rapid commissioning and high system availability. With onboard AS-Interface (ASi) functionality, these modular products integrate seamlessly into existing or new systems, supporting ASi standards V2.0 and V3.0 with integrated follower profiles for connectivity.
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Non-Magnetic ball slides made in the USA

Del-Tron's USA-made, non-magnetic ball slides prevent magnetic interference in medical, semiconductor, military, and laser applications. Featuring silicon nitride ceramic bearings, titanium shafts, aluminum components, and brass fasteners, these lightweight slides come in seven sizes with travels from .5 to 12 in., providing an ideal solution for sensitive environments.
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What's new in robotic efficiency and advanced gauging systems?

Renishaw will highlight its latest solutions for maximizing robot performance and manufacturing efficiency at Automate 2026, taking place June 22-25 at McCormick Place in Chicago. Highlights will be demonstrations of its Robot Calibration System for cell recovery and in-field robot calibration, the Equator-X dual-method gauging system for high-throughput production environments, and position and motion control encoders.
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New Titanium servo-drive line for harsh environs

The Elmo advanced Titanium line of harsh-environment servo drives offers optimal performance with advanced power density, providing exceptional intelligent and compact servo drives that are operational within minutes. These single-axis and multi-axis servo drives, featuring top-performance multi-core processors, deliver superior productivity, Functional Safety, advanced networking, and local intelligence in a compact package for operation in extreme conditions.
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Top Tech Tip: Automating winding, unwinding applications

From paper mills and textiles to sheet metal and plastics manufacturing, winding and unwinding mechanisms play critical parts in many industries. Jonathan Bullick from KEB America examines the automation architecture behind industrial winding applications, with particular emphasis on motor selection, variable frequency drive (VFD) configuration, and control system design. Tension, winding loads, torque speed, regen energy, bus load sharing, and more are all addressed in this excellent technical overview.
Read the KEB America article.

3D printing and 5-axis milling get highly portable

Powered by Siemens' SINUMERIK ONE CNC platform and Ingersoll's MasterPrint^® industrial 3D printer, a new generation of deployable machines is bringing additive and subtractive manufacturing directly to the point of use for defense, disaster relief, and infrastructure and industry.
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Double the force capacity: New RSX50 linear actuators

Tolomatic's RSX50 is the newest, most powerful addition to the RSX Extreme Force electric actuator family. Delivering 50 tons of force within the compact footprint of its 25-ton predecessor, it offers industry-leading power density. Built with high-precision planetary roller screws, the RSX50 provides high-force reliability and environmental compliance, eliminating the mess and maintenance complexity of traditional hydraulic systems.
Get all the specs from Tolomatic.

Integrated drive system for next-gen robotics and human-like motions

Engineered for modern robotics, the BXI is FAULHABER's most powerful integrated drive. Delivering up to 20 Nm of torque, it ensures dynamic, precise control. This compact unit combines a motor, stepped planetary gearhead, and high-res encoder into one functional system. Its strength lies in systematic integration, offering maximum performance in minimal space -- ideal for humanoid robot joints and demanding applications.
Get all the specs from FAULHABER.

Important Qs about linear motor actuators that design engineers should ask

Many design engineers overestimate how accurate traditional motors and actuators stay over long travel runs, mistakenly believing that if the solution works well for short runs, it will work equally well on long ones. Do you know what type of actuator you should use for your application? Patrick Lehr, Product Manager, Precision Mechanics at Parker Hannifin, has some really good tips for you.
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Cobots get 4 m tall with the 8th-Axis Vertical Robot Transfer Unit

Designed to optimize industrial processes across various sectors, the 8th-Axis Vertical Robot Transfer Unit (RTU-V) from Bishop-Wisecarver features a vertical travel length of up to 4 m, enabling a single small robot or cobot to cover large areas traditionally requiring multiple robots. This innovation not only boosts productivity but also offers considerable cost savings, making it an ideal solution for industries such as logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, packaging, and more. Extended reach allows robots to perform tasks on oversized workpieces, such as rocket tubes, boat hulls, and aerospace structures, with ease.
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UR AI Trainer for robotics: First lab-to-factory AI model trainer

Universal Robots unveiled the UR AI Trainer last week. Developed in collaboration with Scale AI, the AI Trainer marks a tectonic shift as robots move from pre-programmed applications to fully AI-driven tasks. These systems are powered by robust data generated in AI training cells where robots imitate humans.
Read the full article.

BLDC motors with advanced safety features built in

Dunker-motoren has built advanced safety functions directly into its BG75 and BG95 BLDC motors, so you no longer need a separate safety controller or complex wiring. This means faster installation, lower costs, and simpler designs. With features such as safe stop and speed control, plus secure digital communication, dSafe motors are ready for automation, robotics, and mobile systems worldwide. It's safety that scales with your future.
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Mobile robotic platform with contactless charging

MAXOLU-TION, an SEW-EURODRIVE company, has introduced the modular Mobile Robot Platform 1600 (MR P1600). It is designed to move heavy loads such as pallets through factories and warehouses, with less manual handling and more consistent material flow. The platform supports configurable load-handling options, including conveyor transfer, lift, drive-under, and precise docking, using standardized material transfer attachments or custom-engineered load handling. Max load is 1,600 kg.
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Configurable modular precision linear stages

PI's Modular Precision Linear (MPL) stage family is a configurable platform that simplifies specifying and integrating high-precision linear positioning systems. Engineers can select mechanical, drive, and feedback options online, creating application-specific stages without the cost of fixed designs. The MPL series offers 50- to 300-mm travel ranges and servo or stepper motor options -- with linear motors planned for future release -- while maintaining high precision, stiffness, and reliability.
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Caltech researchers take first experimental steps toward lightsails that could reach distant star systems

A team of Caltech researchers has developed a platform for characterizing the ultrathin membranes that could one day be used to make these lightsails, where lasers on Earth would exert forces on the sails to send the spacecraft hurtling through space. [Credit: Caltech]

 

 

 

 

The idea of traveling through interstellar space using spacecraft propelled by ultrathin sails may sound like the stuff of sci-fi novels. However, a program started in 2016 by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner known as the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative has been exploring the idea. The concept is to use lasers to propel miniature space probes attached to "lightsails" to reach ultrafast speeds and eventually our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is leading the worldwide community working toward achieving this audacious goal. "The lightsail will travel faster than any previous spacecraft, with potential to eventually open interstellar distances to direct spacecraft exploration that are now only accessible by remote observation," says Harry Atwater, the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Caltech.

The ultimate goal of the lightsail project is to drive a freely accelerating lightsail that is 10 square meters in area and 100 nm or less in thickness. In this first experimental step, the Caltech team used a tethered miniature lightsail in the lab to measure direct radiation pressure from a laser beam. [Credit: Caltech]

 

 

 

 

Now, Atwater and his colleagues at Caltech have developed a platform for characterizing the ultrathin membranes that could one day be used to make these lightsails. Their test platform includes a way to measure the force that lasers exert on the sails used to send the spacecraft hurtling through space. The team's experiments mark the first step in moving from theoretical proposals and designs of lightsails to actual observations and measurements of the key concepts and potential materials.

"There are numerous challenges involved in developing a membrane that could ultimately be used as a lightsail. It needs to withstand heat, hold its shape under pressure, and ride stably along the axis of a laser beam," Atwater says. "But before we can begin building such a sail, we need to understand how the materials respond to radiation pressure from lasers. We wanted to know if we could determine the force being exerted on a membrane just by measuring its movements. It turns out we can."

A paper describing the work appears in the journal Nature Photonics. The lead authors of the paper are postdoctoral scholar in applied physics Lior Michaeli and graduate student in applied physics Ramon Gao, both of Caltech.

The goal is to characterize the behavior of a freely moving lightsail. As a first step, to begin studying the materials and propulsive forces in the lab, the team created a miniature lightsail that is tethered at the corners within a larger membrane.

The researchers used equipment in the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech and a technique called electron beam lithography to carefully pattern a membrane of silicon nitride just 50 nanometers (nm) thick, creating something that looks like a microscopic trampoline. The mini trampoline, a square just 40 microns wide and 40 microns long, is suspended at the corners by silicon nitride springs. Then the team hit the membrane with argon laser light at a visible wavelength. The goal was to measure the radiation pressure that the miniature lightsail experienced by measuring the trampoline's motions as it moved up and down.

A microscope image of the Caltech team's "miniature trampoline," a tiny lightsail tethered at the corners for direct radiation pressure measurement. [Credit: Caltech]

 

 

However, the picture from a physics perspective changes when the sail is tethered, says co-lead author Michaeli. "In this case, the dynamics become quite complex." The sail acts as a mechanical resonator, vibrating like a trampoline when hit by light. A key challenge is that these vibrations are mainly driven by heat from the laser beam, which can mask the direct effect of radiation pressure. Michaeli says the team turned this challenge into an advantage. "We not only avoided the unwanted heating effects but also used what we learned about the device's behavior to create a new way to measure light's force."

The new method lets the device act additionally as a power meter to measure both the force and power of the laser beam.

"The device represents a small lightsail, but a big part of our work was devising and realizing a scheme to precisely measure motion induced by long-range optical forces," says co-lead author Gao.

To do that, the team built what is called a common-path interferometer. In general, motion can be detected by the interference of two laser beams, where one hits the vibrating sample and the other traces a rigid location. However, in a common-path interferometer, because the two beams have traveled nearly the same path, they have encountered the same sources of environmental noise, such as equipment operating nearby or even people talking, and those signals get eliminated. All that remains is the very small signal from the motion of the sample.

The engineers integrated the interferometer into the microscope they used to study the miniature sail and housed the device within a custom-made vacuum chamber. They were then able to measure motions of the sail as small as picometers (trillionths of a meter) as well as its mechanical stiffness -- that is, how much the springs deformed when the sail was pushed by the laser's radiation pressure.

Since the researchers know that a lightsail in space would not always remain perpendicular to a laser source on Earth, they next angled the laser beam to mimic this and again measured the force with which the laser pushed the mini sail. Importantly, the researchers accounted for the laser beam spreading out at an angle and therefore missing the sample in some areas by calibrating their results to the laser power measured by the device itself. Yet, the force under those circumstances was lower than expected. In the paper, the researchers hypothesize that some of the beam, when directed at an angle, hits the edge of the sail, causing a portion of the light to get scattered and sent in other directions.

Looking forward, the team hopes to use nanoscience and metamaterials -- materials carefully engineered at that tiny scale to have desirable properties -- to help control the side-to-side motion and rotation of a miniature lightsail.

"The goal then would be to see if we can use these nanostructured surfaces to, for example, impart a restoring force or torque to a lightsail," says Gao. "If a lightsail were to move or rotate out of the laser beam, we would like it to move or rotate back on its own."

The researchers note that they can measure side-to-side motion and rotation with the platform described in the paper. "This is an important stepping stone toward observing optical forces and torques designed to let a freely accelerating lightsail ride the laser beam," says Gao.

Source: California Institute of Technology

Published February 2025

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